


Flicker

by sionnach_glic



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Episode: s04e05 Escape From the Happy Place, M/M, Slow Burn, This has plot.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-15 23:40:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18083201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sionnach_glic/pseuds/sionnach_glic
Summary: What's up with Eliot's wedding band?





	Flicker

He expects it to be gold, only it’s silver instead. It’s a simple thing really, he thinks, as he watches Fen, this woman he doesn’t know, sliding it onto his finger, staring up at him as if he’s some sort of fucking prince charming. 

 _I am, sweetheart,_ he wants to say, _just not **that** kind._ 

Eliot Waugh’s never thought about wedding bands. He’s not _spousal_ material. He’s more of a hedonistic side piece, but as he spreads his fingers wide, staring down at the firelight flickering across the thin silver band on his fourth finger, he thinks he’d rather it be platinum. 

He keeps his eyes from searching for his friends, not wanting to find pity on their faces, or jealously, in the case of Q’s, but then his curiosity wins, his eyes finally landing on Q’s and his are staring longingly at Alice as something inside Eliot tightens. 

The metal band is heavier than he expects and otherwise unremarkable, except that it’s an annoyance from the start, sitting there on his dominant hand, throwing off his casting and requiring him to learn a whole new way to write so the damn metal will stop digging into his skin.

He watches as Q leaves him behind in the armory, turning the ring on his finger, the band quickly becoming a stark reminder of his new prison, foreign and awkward, solitary and lonely.

 _Love Hurts_ by Nazareth starts to play in his head.

He groans. 

*** 

He’s fondling the band, spinning it round on his finger, thinking about how much he’d like to be fondling something else, the night he tries to convince Fen to partake in an orgy in their bedchamber. 

“Weeeell,” he tells her, with innocent eyes blasting at full force for maximum effect. “ _This_ is new, aaaannnd . . .” he hastily adds, “right inside the lines of marriage.” 

She’s not having it, he can tell, but he’s not quite ready to give up, still thumbing the ring, distracted, and all of this nudity making him _ravenous_.

“Honey love,” he tries, immediately regretting the name, “I’ve been doing this shit since I was twelve, except . . . on a computer.” 

Still not having it. 

He sighs, feeling the weight of the band on his finger, then laughs, amused at the irony that he’s been saddled with such a prude for a wife. 

***

While he’s devising the marriage pact with Idri, wedding plans scattered about, he vaguely wonders if he’ll be allotted another band, noticing Idri’s, the one he still wears for his late wife and his is green like emerald.

 _We need something more exotic, personal,_ he thinks, _something with an origin story._  

Gold and platinum are neither. 

 _We decided on tungsten wedding bands,_ the voice in his head muses, _. . . gold is so derivative . . ._  

He smirks. 

“Tick,” he calls. 

***

When his mind enters the golem the first thing he notices is the new weightlessness of his left hand. He hadn’t realized just how much the simple band had become an extension of who he is now, woven into his identity.

The nakedness of his fourth finger is strangely arousing and incredibly intoxicating, as if he’s somehow already completely nude, being naughty, breaking rules. 

And then there’s Javier, sauntering up to him, telling him how he needs to relax and Eliot, seeing his enthusiasm, thinks, _yes, yes I do._  

 _You’re married,_ the voice points out and instinctively his fingers fumble for his left hand and he can’t be sure if it’s to hide his status, but there they are, his fingers, searching for this band, absently still expecting it to be there, and still surprised to remember again that its not. 

Briefly, he thinks of Fen. 

A reluctant sigh pushes past his lips. “I’m married . . .” he says, “to a woman . . .” but, then Javier is telling him how he has a boyfriend and how it doesn’t count if he’s a continent away and then he finds himself sharing that his wife is actually on another _planet_ and this is rapidly becoming a conversation he never thought he’d be having . . .

 _You’re still married,_ the voice says again, more urgent now, and Eliot swears he can hear the eye roll and disappointment coming from his own internal narration.

But then another voice answers.

_If it doesn’t count, what could it hurt?_

He feels criminal just thinking about it - the good kind – the handsome roguish kind.

And then he’s falling into bed, having the strangest sex of his life. 

***

He briefly considers discarding the silver band and stuffing it in his pocket, like some adulterer, when Umber banishes him. 

And he wonders if it means he’s finally fucking free from the boundaries of Fillorian marriage.

 _Let’s hope so,_ a voice says as he runs down the list of campus candidates he still has yet to fuck senseless. The anticipation has his right hand beginning to work the band off his finger, the metal stuck on the first knuckle – how long has it been on his hand now?

 _Nevermind that,_ the voice in his head says. _Who haven’t we fucked to oblivion?_  

 _Q,_ another voice offers quietly and Eliot’s eyebrows shoot up as if they’re reaching for the clouds. 

 _I already slept with him_ , he wants to counter. 

 _Did you, though?_ The voice says.

He’d been spectacularly trashed and out of his mind on gluttonous emotions that night . . . all of them had been . . . but . . . 

 _No,_ he thinks. _Nope. Not properly, and definitely not to oblivion . . ._  

But then his smile dies remembering Q’s hung up on Alice now . . . remembering how Q had been spectacularly trashed that night too . . . remembering how, for Q, the whole affair had been one giant mistake . . . 

Fen’s face pops into his mind then and he remembers that she’s pregnant with his child, and though she’s never aroused him quite like Q does, he suddenly feels shamefully guilty, as he realizes he’s grown to love her. 

“Huh,” he murmurs, sinking down into a chair, his mind marinating in these admissions and his hands doing the work to twirl the band back down onto his finger. 

Later, when he finds Q, ready to ask him, to have him explain why he’s been banished, he finds himself standing there, feet unmoving, watching him, studying him for a moment. 

He’d always found the neurotic fanboy strangely attractive, in a way he could never quite place, but staring at him now, he can feel some new space open up inside him, somewhere deep and low in his belly, like a door that’s just barely cracked, the smallest flicker of light streaming through. 

Days later, as he’s fondling the band again and suggesting to Idri that they test whether his marriage vows still hold true, he’s thinking of Q when their lips meet, and craving his mouth instead.

*** 

“We can barter it Q,” he tells him, trying to get the damn thing off, but it won’t come and it’s little use anyway because Q’s having none of it. 

Eliot watches as he shakes his head so vigorously he’s certain Q’s knocked something loose. “No, Eliot, no way.” 

 _Thank god,_ the voice says guiltily and Eliot can’t help but feel immensely grateful. 

This thing that he had once mildly loathed, has come to mean something deeply important to him now – the sole item he has to remind him of the time before he wound up in Fillory’s past, solving an endless, infuriating puzzle.

The thin silver band was the residence of Fen & Fray. It was the Fillory he had served as High King. It was the Eliot he had been before the mosaic . . . 

But, most of all, it was Margo. Sometimes when he looked at it he could hear the words she had said to him on the day it had come to rest on his hand. 

_Is it ok if I hate that you’re getting married? I think you’re the only person that I can stand._

_Me too, Bambi,_ he thinks now, _me too._

 _That’s not true,_ another voice argues quietly. _You can stand Q._

He glances at the man, standing there with that determined look on his face, the one that Eliot finds both maddening and alluring, knowing that the voice has the right of it. 

But they needed food. They needed paper to track their progress. They needed supplies to fix the fucking leaky roof and chalk, surprisingly, was not cheap . . . 

They needed too many things.

He could sacrifice this one thing. He could do it. For them, for the quest, he could do it.

“Well it’s not doing either of us any good here,” he hears himself saying, pointing exaggeratingly to the band. 

But Eliot immediately regrets his words when he sees the death glare Q shoots him. 

“We’re not selling the ring, Eliot.” 

“Why not?” He doesn’t know why he keeps pushing to lose a thing he wants to keep. He throws up his hands. “Fen isn’t here, Q. Would she want us to starve? What does it matter?” 

As far as he can tell, Q shouldn’t even give a damn what he does with it, but Eliot also suspects this has nothing to do with the band and everything to do with the things Q isn’t ready to give up. They’ve been here nearly six months, yet are no closer to solving the mosaic. This was going to take a lifetime. Eliot had settled in, resigning himself, ready to complete the task . . . 

But Q . . . Q isn’t coping nearly so well and struggling to hide how unprepared he still is to let go of the life he thought he was going to have. 

Eliot watches Q as Q stares at the mosaic, quiet for several moments before he finally says, “Because it matters to you, El.” _Q misses little._ “We aren’t spending the rest of our lives here.” 

It’s the defeated shoulders, the distant eyes that tell Eliot even Q no longer believes those words. 

 _I think we might be,_ he wants to say, _would it be so awful if we did?_  

“Ok,” he begins instead, allowing them both to continue living in some fantasy where they get to see their friends again, “but we’re going to be here for the foreseeable future. I can still barter the—” 

“No,” Q cuts him off, “We’ll barter with magic,” he says instead and Eliot sighs, outwardly exasperated, but, inwardly, shamefully relieved. 

***

“Yellow,” he calls out over his shoulder and he hears Q rummaging through the tiles, followed by the sound of one sliding across the mosaic. “Thanks,” he says. 

“Mm hmm,” Q mutters, lost in his corner of the mosaic. 

Eliot brushes the chalk off his hands, licking a thumb so he can wipe all the blues and pinks off the metal of his wedding band, and leans back on his heels, surveying his progress, his eyes flitting between the drawing in his hands and the tiles. “Hmm. Blue.” 

“How much?” 

He’s supremely bored with the mosaic today. He glances at Q over his shoulder, as he raises the drawing, pointing to an area. “Oh, you know, just a fuck ton,” he says, flippant. 

Some days he woke inspired, creative, ready to explore an idea that might reflect the beauty of all life, but other days he felt devoid of effort, dreading even getting out of bed to do the same damn thing again.

Today was a day in between the two, mechanical and mindless with an underlying tinge of mounting frustration. 

He wants to be done with the day and for one small indulgent moment he lets his other life seep in, the one from before, where he’s home, at the physical kids cottage, dressed to the nines and having a cocktail and a cigarette with Margo. 

He takes a deep breath in, releasing it forcefully out of his mouth. 

“Everything ok?” Q asks and there’s a hesitation in the question, as if he’s afraid he’ll get slapped just for asking it. 

“A cocktail would make all of this so much better . . .” _Or even just a cock._

_Or Margo. And our home fucking planet . . ._  

Q’s mouth is silent, but his frown loudly commiserate, as he reaches to pick up a tall pile of blues, abandoning his corner of the puzzle and Eliot reaches out his arms to take them, as everything happens at once.

Q’s feet trip on the lip of the mosaic, tiles launching into the air, and for a moment Eliot, concerned they will break apart in the landing, casts a spell to slow their fall, but then Q’s crashing into him, knocking him backward, sending them both plummeting to the ground, tiles rattling to the earth all around them.

“Shit,” Q mutters from on top of him, in between a “sorry” and a, “I didn’t mean . . .”

 _Always apologizing,_ Eliot thinks, wanting to set him straight, but Q is on top of him now, sending his mind elsewhere and he can’t help himself.

“If you wanted to roll around in the dirt you could have just asked, Coldwater,” he jests. 

A queer look passes over Q’s face, and is that . . . _jesus_ , is he? 

 _Blushing,_ the voice answers, amused. _Oh yes, our little Q is blushing._  

Eliot battles a sly grin. _This day just got far more intriguing . . ._  

Q’s not getting up, and that’s fine with Eliot, happy to make him squirm a little, if only to keep things interesting, but then he notices, _feels_ , how the air between them slowly shifts, growing into some unspoken thing and suddenly his smile is gone. 

Swallowing, his heart begins to race as he realizes where his hands are, that they're on Q's hips, his thumb drawing a slow path across his skin, not even under his control now and it's then that Eliot Waugh considers the possibility he might actually be blushing too.

Q clears his throat. “Lunch?” he says.

It takes Eliot a moment to find words, raising an eyebrow, giving him a curious look. “It’s 9 am . . .”

He’s certain he’s not imagining this now. Q’s flustered, because of _this_ and inside, that door, that space, that flicker that had begun to open, to burn, so long ago, back before the quest, back before they lost magic, busts wide-open, flying off the hinges, blazing. 

Q presses off of him, pushing his hair out of his eyes, shrugging. “Second breakfast then.” 

Eliot’s brows furrow as he props himself up on his forearms, a questioning smile teasing at the corner of his mouth, and for the briefest of moments, he considers saying, _or we could just dine on each other_. He allows himself to entertain the thought of pulling Q back down on top of him, of kissing him, in the middle of the mosaic, right on the mouth . . . 

He considers a million pleasure-filled endings.

But Q’s already rising and heading for the cottage, as the voice cuts in, dousing out his arousal. _Have some self-respect. He doesn’t want you. You’d just be filler for the thing he can’t have here._

But another voice has other ideas. _Why not have some fun? You’re stuck here. What do you have to lose?_  

“Just our friendship,” he mutters, twirling the band on his finger. 

“Did you say something?” he hears Q ask, but he waves him on with his hand. 

“Second breakfast,” he hears himself saying, rising, defeated. “Ok.” 

***

But, things are different after that. 

Is he imagining it or did Q’s fingertips loiter a little too long when he passed him that tile earlier? 

And the morning before, when he’d woken to find Q’s body pressed against his, had that been real? 

The space between and around them now is charged, charged with something palpable, occupied by stolen glances and loaded pauses and lingering hands . . . 

It’s driving Eliot mad. 

Three days now. Three days he’s had to wake before Q just so he could head for the forest and the cover of the trees to rub one out. 

Eliot knew exactly what he wanted and who he wanted it with, but he wasn’t at all sure if Q wanted the same or if he just— 

“Eliot?” he hears Q say and he blinks. 

“Hm? Ok,” he says, dropping his fingers away from the band he'd been fondling and glancing down at Q kneeling on the floor of the mosaic. “Green,” he tells him. “Green.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah, green one,” he says, pointing with Q’s ridiculous walking stick. “There,” and when Q moves to place it he decides to have a bit of fun. “No, no, _there_ ,” he tells him, pointing. “ _There_.” Q glances at him over his shoulder, following his eye line, moving to place it again. “Just kidding you had it right the first time,” he laughs. 

Q leans back on his heels, staring up at him over his shoulder. “You know what? I’ll tell you where I’ll put this . . .” 

Is that, is he . . . wait, was he . . . _Is_ he . . . Is he _flirting_ with him? 

 _Oh yes,_ the voice says encouragingly. _Definitely flirting._

A sly grin slides up Eliot’s face. 

“Yeah? Come at me, Coldwater—” 

“Peaches? Plums?” a voice says and when they both look up, Eliot’s eyes land on an attractive woman. “Arielle,” she tells them and Eliot doesn’t miss the way Quentin straightens, expectant, _hopeful_. 

 _See,_ the voice tells him. _Filler._  

Yet when the evening pulls the sun down and he’s lying there in bed, their bodies touching innocently, but desire grasping at foolish possibilities, he thinks he may go mad, that he may explode, if he doesn’t do something about the hunger he has for this man. 

 _After_ , the voice offers. 

After they solve the mosaic, after the quest is complete, after they’re finally back home. 

He rolls on to his side, swallowing a groan, a hand twisting and untwisting the band round his finger, as he stares at Q’s closed eyes, wondering if he’s actually asleep, wondering if he could possibly be as conflicted as he feels. 

 _After_ , he thinks, reluctantly agreeing. 

*** 

They take a day to travel to the nearest town to collect supplies.

He’s at the baker’s stand, talking to the old man about where to find a glass maker, explaining that they need jars for canning vegetables and then he’s asking about decent twine for hanging herbs and peppers for drying. 

The man nods, calling out the name _Fen_ , and Eliot holds his breath, knowing it can’t possibly be _his_ Fen, but hoping, foolishly, all the same, that it will be. Instinctively, absently, the fingers of his right hand reach for the silver band, prepared to raise the left palm up, to say, _See wife? Faithful, to the last._  

A young black-haired girl peeks out from the back of the shop, timid and no older than five or six, holding the twine. 

“My granddaughter,” the old man explains, smiling proudly, and Eliot kneels down as the girl approaches, taking the twine with one hand as the other reaches into his roughspun sack, pulling out a peach, and passing it to her. 

They had stopped at Arielle’s stand earlier and that was also where Q had remained when Eliot had moved on half an hour ago. 

“We should get some peaches and plums,” Q had said, but Eliot knew what he really wanted and called him on it. 

“If you want to flirt with her, just say so,” he had told him. 

“That’s not— I don’t— She’s just another person, El. Besides us.” 

Eliot didn’t know what that meant, but for reasons he didn’t understand it had irritated him. He’d left to find the rest of the supplies alone after that. 

He leaves the baker, sauntering into the wine merchant two doors down, deciding to imbibe while waiting for Q, only to realize, after his third cup, that he still isn’t coming. 

Aggravated, he makes his way to the end of the market where the glassmaker will be, milling through the crowds, the air laced with the god awful stench of freshly caught fish, and he’s passing a stall selling beaded jewelry, reminding him of Margo's eye patches, when he makes a beeline for another with gorgeous silks, thinking of how much he misses his Fillory wardrobe, briefly considering whether he could smuggle himself into the castle and steal some of it back, when he spots a beautiful man leaning against the frame of the stall.

His skin is sun-kissed and Eliot wonders what’s hiding underneath all those draped layers of silk he’s wearing when the man’s eyes travel down the length of his body, clearly wondering the same.

 _Why, hello there_. 

Eliot holds out his hand, nearly saying _I’m High King,_ before remembering and simpering into a far duller, “I’m Eliot.” 

“Mace,” the silk merchant says, taking his hand, and Eliot watches as his eyes travel to the band on his left hand. “Looking for your wife?” 

“No,” he says, a bit too quickly and feeling only a little guilty given his earlier thoughts. 

Mace is still holding his hand. “Your husband, then.” 

Eliot leans a shoulder against the frame of the shop, the wine making him bold. “Not that either,” he says. 

Mace looks intrigued now. “For yourself then?” He motions to the fabrics, stepping closer. “I think you’ll find my silk very . . .” he eyes travel back to Eliot’s, appraising him once more, “satisfying.” 

 _I bet I will._  

“Hey,” Q’s voice calls from behind and he turns, watching the way Quentin’s eyes travel from his face, to Mace's, down to their hands and back. “I found a glassmaker,” he finally says, “he’s at—” 

“The end of the row,” Eliot finishes, dropping his hand away. “I know.” 

“Great,” he says, staring at Mace, grabbing him by the elbow, dragging him away, with an impatient, “then let’s go.” 

He twists out of Q’s grasp, placing his hands on his shoulders. 

“You . . . go ahead,” he tells him, glancing at Mace over his shoulder, then turning back to Q, hoping he gets the message. “I’ll catch up.” 

Q gives Eliot a look. “I thought you said, ‘get in, get out?’” 

Eliot raises an eyebrow. “That was before you disappeared for two hours to make eyes at Arielle,” he says, barely bothering to hide his irritation. He shrugs. “Look, you had your fun,” he says, smoothing the fabric on Q’s shoulders, trying to sound indifferent, “let me have mine.”

“I wasn’t having _fun_ with Arielle and, and . . .” he pauses, grabbing his left hand and holding it up to him, pointing to the silver band, “and you’re _married_ , El.”

He draws his hand back, crossing his arms, cocking his head. “Am I though?” He says, doubtful, ready to lay out the evidence, ticking them off with his fingers. “We’re in the past . . .and in that sense I haven’t actually married Fen ye—” 

But Q’s not listening and looking past him at Mace, studying his body with a look of distaste, as he says, “He looks like a stuffed turtle.” 

Eliot frowns, glancing back at Mace, faking a polite smile. 

Perhaps he was right.

He turns back to Q, who’s raking him with an accusing look. 

 _Shit, Q,_ he thinks, _I haven’t even done anything yet_ , but then he watches as something else seeps into his face, something Eliot is struggling to place . . . but then . . .

Eliot tries to swallow the spectacular grin that’s threatening to rise on his face. “Are you _jealous_ , Coldwater?”

Q crosses his arms, shifting his feet, sending his gaze there, ignoring the question. “Look, you can do better.” 

 _With who,_ he nearly says. 

They’re stuck here and he’s certain he’s going to detonate if he doesn’t find a way to blow off some steam, but then Q’s staring at him with that smug determined face of his – the one that tells Eliot Q already knows he’s won. 

Eliot exhales loudly, glowering. “Fine,” he grinds out, acquiescing, glancing back at Mace apologetically. 

The fingers of Q’s palm land between his shoulder blades, encouraging him forward, guiding him away and Eliot marvels at how that’s all it takes now for his desire to grow dangerously unchecked. 

***

“Fuck,” he hears Q say, “fuck, fuck, FUCK,” and Eliot says nothing, reaching for the chalk to write it down, trying to remain the calm one today, but his patience is just as thin because they’ve been at this shit for a year and three hours later he’s hurling a tile into the woods, pissed as fuck at this god damn mosaic and the trap it’s laid for them both. 

He fists the handful of drawings in his hands. “This,” he hears himself saying, pointing criminally at the mosaic, “this is going to be the rest of our fucking lives, Q. This fucking puzzle in the middle of fucking Fillory.” He throws the pages in the air, not caring. “There isn’t even 2-ply toilet paper here!” 

Q’s the one that talks him back down off the ledge, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe we solve it tomorrow.”

Eliot wishes there was more opium in this air.

They decide to end the day early, both too pissed off to try another iteration, too silently terrified by the idea of being stuck here for another year, and that’s when Eliot grabs the skin of wine, passing it to Q, suggesting they just get trashed.

When they’re both two cups in, his irritation with the puzzle finally beginning to ebb, toasting to their last year at this thing, knowing all the while that it won’t be, that this is just the first of many, he hears Q murmur a quiet, open-ended _hey_.

Eliot looks at him and there are things there, there on Q’s face, vulnerable things, things that he’s only seen once before, back when they first met, back when he’d told Quentin that he had killed someone and for a moment he’s uneasy, unsure of what will come next. 

“Hey,” is all he manages to get out before Q’s mouth is on his, in that awkward, endearing way that is entirely Quentin Coldwater, and Eliot’s genuinely surprised, momentarily stunned, as he stares at the uncertainty written all over his friend’s face. 

 _Did I just fuck this up?_ Q’s eyes are saying, but there is something else there too, something that’s bold and brave and saying, _I know what you’re thinking_ and _yes, I want this_ and that’s all the endorsement Eliot needs as his fingers brush past Q’s jaw, wrapping around his neck. He kisses him slowly, purposefully, in the way he’s imagined, in the way that he’s wanted for months or maybe years now . . . and all the while his mind is reeling at the thought of taking Quentin Coldwater, finally, to oblivion.

When they find themselves fumbling toward the bed, breathing out each other’s names, grasping at belts and tugging at shirts, Eliot isn’t sure who’s seducing who, but as the candles begin to flicker, the muscles deep and low on his belly pulling in, growing taut, as he’s galloping toward the edge of some abyss, ready and willing to hurl himself deep into its depths, it’s Q, he’s certain, who ends up taking _him_ to oblivion instead. 

He hadn’t known. He didn’t know that it could be, that it could _feel_ , like this. 

Lying there, delirious, a blissful laugh pushes past Eliot’s lips as one of his hands glides across Q’s body, pausing, drawing shapes on his chest and Q stills it, flattening it with his own, turning his gaze to look at him, looking breathless and Eliot fights a satisfied smirk when Q picks up his hand, studying his wedding band. 

Eliot frowns. “Back in town, when you said— Does it really bother you? That I’m—”

“Married? It should. I don’t want—” Q pauses, shaking his head. “No. It doesn’t bother me.” He frowns. “Does it bother you that it doesn’t bother me?” 

Eliot's still frowning. “It should.” Guilt begins to trickle into his chest, but just as quickly it evaporates when he hears Q say, “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.” 

Eliot meets his eyes. “How long?” 

“ _Loooong_ ,” Q laughs and Eliot looks at him then, at those dazed brown eyes, thinking, impossibly, that Quentin Coldwater wants him and wants _this_.

Eliot, encouraged, climbs on top of him, sliding his body down over his, their skin flush, and mouths greedy. 

They don’t talk about it after and in the morning, when he wakes, Eliot half expects to find Q already up, working on the mosaic, all of it weird now. 

Only it’s not. 

Q’s lying there, next to him, eyes open, eyes _yearning_ and Eliot settles into this new space as if he’s spent his entire life living there.

***

In what feels like a blink Teddy’s no longer a boy, but a man, telling them one day, “I’ve met someone,” and then, much later, “I’m going to ask her to wed me,” and Eliot watches as a smile, one with a will of its own, climbs up his son’s face and settles in. 

Q’s does the same a moment later and Eliot leans back in his chair, unsure if any of this is real.

He’s spiraling the band off his finger a moment later, but it won’t come because it’s been a part of him for so long now, and so he rises, reaching for the butter, dipping two fingers in and when the band finally slips off his left hand, he rinses it, holding it out to Teddy, saying, “Give her this when you do,” all the while feeling Quentin’s gaze on him as he does.

Later, when Teddy is gone, the two of them naked and breathless in their bed, Eliot trailing his mouth down Q’s chest, he hears him murmur, “That was a thing you did today. Giving Teddy the band.” 

“Mm hmm,” he murmurs back, when he mouth reaches his neck. 

“El,” he says and it’s just a word, but wrapped inside it he hears that this is suddenly serious, that Q wants to see his face, and so he pulls his mouth away, meeting his eyes, watching as Q turns to face him, propping his head up in his hand. “I know,” he says quietly. “I know what it meant to you.” 

He shrugs. “It’s just a ring,” he tells him, but even he hears how hollow the words are. “I’ll be fine.”

He’s not sure he will be though. He isn’t sure he wants Teddy to have it or that he’s ready to let it go. He’d thought about giving it to Q years ago, to show him, in some small way, all that he had come to mean to him, but then he’d pushed the thought aside, thinking it juvenile. Yet, sometimes, in his most vulnerable fantasies, he’d imagine that the ring bound him to Q rather than Fen. 

He doesn’t know when it happened or how, but the ring isn’t just Fillory or Margo anymore. 

It’s Q now. 

Q's the only person, the only one, who knew the Eliot he had been before the mosaic and the Eliot he had become after.

“Hey, look at me,” Q says, and when he does he thinks Q must read his mind as he tells him, “You were a good person before and you’re still a good person now.”

They don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about their lives from before or their friends or who they had been and the dreams they had had. It had been too depressing at first and sorrow wasn’t a thing they had time for, but now he suspects the reasons are different and tied to shame, shame that, if given the chance, they might not _want_ to go back.

They had built a home here, away from all the bullshit that had seemed to follow them everywhere on Earth. 

So for Q to mention the past now it has Eliot siting up, alert. 

“Q, you don’t—” he starts. 

“I don’t regret this, Eliot,” Q says and the words are a confession. “I’m not sorry that this leg of the quest ended up being you and me.” 

“Neither am I,” he admits and when Q pulls him in, kissing him on the mouth, wrapping around him in a way that’s familiar and warm, he thinks, _not even a little._  

“You know,” Q is saying against his lips and Eliot can hear the teasing smile in the words, “you have this tick, where you fiddle with it whenever you’re thinking too hard.” 

“I do?” he says, pulling back. “Huh.” 

Q rolls over on to his back, placing his hands behind his head. “What are you’re going to reach for now when the mosaic pisses you off?”

Eliot’s smile is roguish. “I’ve an idea,” he says as his hands slide under the linens.

***

The memories arrive slowly at first, small glimpses, trickling in like a faucet that hasn’t been fully turned off, pieces of half-woken dreams, ebbing and seeping into him, there and then gone, like a moment he’s reaching for, trying to clasp, or a word he can’t seem to recall, sitting there, cloaked, on the tip of his tongue.

“Peaches and plums . . . peaches and plums . . .” he mumbles, trying to grasp at why those words should matter. 

But then the emotions come like angry waves, rapid and violent, crashing over him in what feels like one brilliant moment, with no time provided to organize or assimilate or absorb them all, and threatening to drag him under. 

He lurches forward, thinking he may be ill and he remembers _feeling_ ill, too, ill with jealousy when Q found Arielle and then grief when she was gone, ill in a body that had been ancient. Each step had taken more effort then, breaths had felt less complete, as if he could no longer use the full capacity of lungs, and his knees had grown unreliable, his hands spotted with age . . . 

“I got so _old_ ,” he murmurs, more to himself than to Quentin, nearly disgusted. 

He’s suddenly acutely aware of the wedding band on his finger.

How strange it is to have it there again after so many years, and how strange it was that _that_ should be strange . . .

It had been gone . . . hadn’t it? But then, he never took it off, so how? Yet . . . he’d given it away to someone . . . hadn’t he?

The weight of the band, there, on his finger is at once completely familiar and normal to the Eliot he is, but also foreign and something else entirely to the Eliot who had lived all those years in Fillory. 

 _Teddy,_ he remembers abruptly, the name arriving like a punch to the gut, all of the air evacuating his lungs and goddamn is his throat tight then. 

“We had a family,” he whispers, astonished, remembering, handing the band to his son, remembering his daughter-in law, their grandchildren and . . . 

This is insane.

He glances at Q and when he does his mind shows him a dreadful patchwork quilt, as if it’s right there in the room with them, only he remembers how he would wrap himself in it as an old man because it smelled like the smoke from the fire, like the cottage, like home, like Quentin . . .

But this was home. Wasn’t it?

He’s never felt so temporally disoriented.

When Q asks how they remember it, Eliot doesn’t answer, instead hearing words that he feels he’s said before, a very long time ago.

_Time travel only really makes sense to me when I’m on a good deal of peyote._

There’s no way they should be able to . . . How did they . . . Why . . . 

“ _Did_ it happen?” he hears himself say. 

“Fifty years,” Q murmurs, sounding as bewildered as he feels and there’s a look there, on Q’s face, one that he remembers because he’s seen it before, but not from this life and not in this place. 

Eliot swallows. “It happened.” 

The memories. The memories of this life he shared with Q are just like the wedding band, foreign, yet familiar, overwhelming and intoxicating and he wants to live inside them because they feel so damn good, so when Q suggests they do just that, live it again, the voice immediately chimes in with a _yes, let’s._  

“Why the fuck not,” Q is saying, emphatic now, and Eliot nearly agrees, until another voice arrives, this one pouring cold water all over his enthusiasm.

 _You were his only choice there, remember?_ The voice reminds him. _Filler._

Defensive words are coming out of his mouth before he can stop them. “That’s not me,” he’s telling him. _You sure? It certainly seemed like you._ “And that’s definitely not you . . .” _The evidence points to the contrary._ “not when we have a choice.” 

Q’s mouth gapes, then closes, then opens again, only to shut again, having decided, apparently, to stare back at him blank faced, instead. “Sorry,” he hears Q finally mumble and the word has Eliot angry, angry that Q would think to apologize to _him_ for _this_.

 _Somehow you’ve managed to fuck this up royally,_ the voice says, pissed.

Another voice barges in, this one sounding like his father. _It’s not a fuck up if you’re saving him from a lifetime of misery with you._  

His heaves a sigh, tightening his jaw, glancing at Q, feeling a distinct urge to draw him close, but also to push him away, and there’s no space for this confusion in his head, so he does what he does best, sweeping it all away, somewhere deep inside himself, as the space between his lungs grows smaller, tighter, closing shut, and he rubs his thumb against the band, unsure, burying it all down, leaving it to worry about after – _after_ , when the quest is done, when the quest is complete. 

*** 

“I stay,” he hears Q say, “in the castle.” 

Eliot wants to throttle him. 

“It’s a fair deal. She’s been there for centuries and she’s tired and I’m—” Q pauses, his eyes finding Eliot’s. “And I’m strong enough . . . thanks to the quest.” 

 _Thanks to the quest._  

Q says the words like some after thought, but Eliot starts at those words. He knows, he _knows_ it’s the mosaic and the lifetime they shared there that has Q offering himself up like some goddamn sacrificial lamb. 

“This isn’t the solution,” he hears someone say behind him and he turns. 

For once he’s Team Alice. “I second that,” he rushes to say, nervously spiraling the band on his finger, turning back to Q, but splashed across his face is that determined look that Eliot knows too well now and he realizes, miserably, that this is a battle already lost. 

“Alice, who’s the one that died for us?” Q says before shooting his don’t-argue-with-me gaze Eliot’s way. “You were willing to stay in Fillory for forever. How is this different?” 

 _Because I hadn’t fallen in love with you yet,_ he nearly shouts.

 _Yes you had,_ the voice scoffs. _Even then, you had._

Margo suggests they kill the monster with the god-killing bullet and, frantically, he’s agreeing, saying, “Second, second that, yes,” not caring who sees, desperate now, the concern coming out in his words, visible for all to witness.

But Q’s not yielding, going on about the monster, how they can’t let it escape and then he’s saying words that tug at the ghost of a memory, words similar to ones Eliot had once said to him, long ago, at the edge of the mosaic. “The only way to make sure it doesn’t is to do this the _hard_ way.” _Goddammit Q_. “The quest taught us that it’s like that sometimes.” 

Eliot knows Q’s right, he knows that even if he had been in love Q then he would have still married Fen, he would have made that sacrifice, because back then Fillory had mattered to Q and that made it matter to Eliot.

Fillory was bigger than them, than _this_ , this thing that existed in the space between them now.

 _And so is magic,_ the voice agrees.

But that didn’t make Eliot hate it any less.

Yet, better words aren’t coming so Eliot just gapes at Q instead, reluctantly, submitting. 

***

The monster leaves Eliot to take up residence in Q.

 _Seemed fitting,_ the monster tells them, shrugging, indifferent, _for someone who has so often wanted to end his life._

They’re all sitting there, struggling and failing to deduce the monster’s identity, voices rising, shouting over each other and Eliot stopped bothering to contribute long ago, lost in his thoughts, thinking about Q and resenting how this isn’t how he’d imagined his rescue would go.

Sitting there, trapped in his happy place, he’d fantasized a million ways he would be freed and in all of them Q had been there, waiting, for him.

His fingers thumb for a band that no longer holds any residence on his hand.

 _I never saw the monster wearing it,_ Julia had told him. _I’m sorry._  

The monster had been careless with all the things that mattered to Eliot, Q most of all.

“He’s going to kill him,” he tells them all, absently, as all the voices die at once, eyes shifting to him, but he doesn't care because all he can feel and remember is the loathsome way the monster had felt about Q near the end. “If he kills him—” he starts.

“Q said the same thing,” Julia points out quietly. “But you’re still here.” 

“It’s gotta be Cronus,” Penny interrupts, returning to the matter at hand. “I’m telling you—”

Marina rolls her eyes, crossing her arms, opening her mouth to speak, but Eliot cuts her off.

“No,” he says slowly, shaking his head. “Ora . . . she said the gods _created_ the monster, but Cronus—”

“Cronus created the gods,” Marina finishes, bored, turning to Julia. “You were – are? – a goddess,” she says. Julia shrugs. Marina snorts. “And they didn’t let you in on _any_ of their dirty laundry?” 

Julia shrugs again, this time apologetically.

It’s Eliot who finally realizes it days later, having puzzled it out from being stuck inside it. 

Much later, while the rest of them are asleep, he’s still awake, with a untouched bottle of whiskey and a pile of tomes for companions, studying the spartan apartment where they’ve been crashing, loathing it’s sharp angles and it’s open floor plans, hating how everything here seemed to have a careful place, as if one thing out of order would cause the whole building to collapse, bringing the world to end.

The old Eliot might have liked this apartment.

 _This,_ he thinks sourly, _is a space for someone who needs to color inside the lines._

But he’d lived a life _outside_ of the lines and once it was done there was no going back, no returning to the faulty conclusions of his younger self – that the messiness of life was somehow a hindrance, an inconvenience, rather than a blessing. 

He wants to collapse down in a chair and wake up from this nightmare, but instead he pushes back his curls and squats before the fireplace, building the fire by hand so he can feel useful, layering the logs in the manner that he had once taught Q, troubled by how he’ll manage to save him, wondering if this is how Q had felt about him.

“We’re going to get you back Q,” he murmurs to no one. “ _I’m_ going to get you back.”

And he sits there, watching, as the spark begins to flicker, growing into a blaze.

“You’re good at that,” someone says behind him and he turns. “Building a fire,” Julia says softly, taking tentative steps toward him. How long had she been standing there? “Wouldn’t have expected that.” 

He thinks of the cottage, swearing he catches the scent of the abysmal rabbit stew Q attempted to make once, a sad smile threatening the corner of his mouth at the memory, when he tells her, “I’ve had a lifetime of practice.”

He watches as she frowns, her eyes traveling down to his hands, his own following, and landing on his fingers still fumbling for a band that is no longer there. 

Impulsively, he thinks of Teddy. Did he still exist? Didn’t it mean he must if Eliot remembered him? Or had he never existed at all? 

His throat is tight as he ponders all of that, glancing at Julia and she’s staring at him, expectant. He doesn’t want her here, a thing he senses she knows, but it’s clear she has no intention of leaving so he heaves a sigh, motioning to the spot next to him. 

She takes a seat on the floor, drawing her knees into her chest and into the silence that settles between them she offers, “Wanna talk about it?” 

He can tell by the words what about and some cavalier part of him wonders if she had awareness of all of it because she’d been a goddess. 

His eyes are on the fire, his words guarded. “Did Q tell you?”

“He didn’t have to,” she murmurs. 

She leans forward on her knees, and he watches as she shifts one of the logs, hoping she doesn’t smother his fire with rookie mistakes and when she doesn’t the question in his mind must be evident on his face because she shrugs. “I was a girl scout.”

He doesn’t know why he tells her. “For a long time, I couldn’t believe it was real.”

“I know,” she tells him sadly. “But now?” 

“It was.” His smile is sad. “It _is_ real.” 

She leans forward. “What you shared . . . it’s what we call compassionate love,” Julia supplies and somehow he knows that by _we_ she means the gods. 

“Compassionate love,” he says slowly, trying out the words, shifting his eyes to hers.

She wraps her arms around her knees. “Eliot, down here, so many are chasing the wrong kind of love.”

He stiffens, irritated. He’d spent half his life being told that who he wanted, and how he wanted to love them, was _wrong_.

His mouth doesn’t bother to conceal the condescension in his next words. “The _wrong_ kind of love?” 

 _Fuck the gods,_ he thinks.

Julia merely shrugs. “Vain love. Passionate love.”

That part of him, the piece that’s still too afraid to be vulnerable, is cynical. 

“So just the most fun kind,” he tells her, dryly, knowing the words are instantly a lie, immediately regretting them, thinking of Q. _Maybe that’s how it started with Q,_ the voice says quietly, _passionately,_ and for once the other voice agrees, saying, _but then it grew into something else and you became a better person for it._ And it’s this moment when Eliot remembers he said he would be braver. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I just—”

“No. You’re right. Romance _is_ fun. But it’s also obsessive . . .” she tells him. “And it can be selfish, more interested in how another person can make _us_ feel good rather than on how we can be of service to them, supporting them, helping them grow . . .” A small smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. “But compassionate love is different . . . It’s what romantic love can mature into when given the chance. It’s love given with no expectation it will be returned to you or that you’ll get some sort of recognition for offering it. It’s love _without_ conditions, simply given to be given. And there’s courage in that act, in choosing to love another in spite of their imperfection, in spite of the things they do that disappoint us.” She cocks her head, smiling. “Like all those times Q knocked over your tiles . . .” Eliot snaps his eyes to hers, as she adds, “and all those times you forgave him.”

He swallows. “Well that’s not creepy,” he says dryly, turning his gaze back to the fire. “Nope. Not even a little bit.”

She chuckles a shrug, resting a hand softly on his forearm. “Eliot, for most of the souls on this plane, to love another like that – truly selflessly - is too big of an ask. But not for Q.” A pause. “And not for you.”

He turns his gaze to his naked left hand, saying quiet words. “Is it selfish to want another chance to love like that?”

She leans in close. “Honestly?” Her smile is teasing. “We wish all of you did it more.”

***

When they finally get Q back, it’s days before he’s awake and they’re finally alone. 

They’re both standing in that rigid apartment, Q staring at the skyline, asking what’s happened in his absence, and Eliot, several paces behind him, with a hip propped against the dining table, watching him, unsure how best to answer that question.

Eliot spreads his left palm across the wood grain of the table, a finger tracing the spiral of a knot, his eyes fixed on the place where the band should be, his chest tight, as he finally answers flatly, “Fen died.” He raises his eyes to Quentin’s back. “I thought you did too.”

Q turns, quiet for a moment. “But I didn’t.” 

“Thank god.”

“I’m sorry about Fen,” he begins, and it’s a simple platitude at first, but then he cuts himself off as something akin to dread takes up residence on his face and Eliot winces, knowing what will come next. “Did I . . .”

A pit opens in Eliot’s belly.

“Q,” He says, the word a gentle warning, as he takes a cautious step forward.

He watches as the man’s jaw ticks. “Eliot . . .”

“Q.” Another step, more deliberate now. “It wasn’t you . . .”

“I—” His face contorts. “In Fillory, in the throne room. I . . . I— Oh God . . .” He collapses to his knees with his head in his hands. And when Eliot finally reaches him, kneeling in front of him, Q’s eyes are pleading. “El, I’m so—”

“Nope,” he says quickly, as he very slowly, very cautiously places his hands on Q’s shoulders, his gaze fixed on his. “We’re not doing this Coldwater. It wasn’t you.” 

But Q leans back, glaring at him with critical eyes. “It must be the same for you. You were inside it.”

Eliot gulps. It was. It _is_ the same.

The monster’s actions while in his body were now his memories too, but he had been hoping Quentin would somehow be spared that particular misery.

Q looks like he wants to jump out of his own skin and Eliot is helpless, knowing the feeling, bile rising in his throat. 

“I know it’s all shitty right now,” is all he can think to say, but Q is lost in some darkness, and Eliot’s hesitant to touch him, knowing just how much the monster had been physically violent with him.

Vaguely, he wonders if Q feels the same about him.

He takes a risk, squeezing his shoulders, searching his eyes, gently reminding him, “ _You_ didn’t kill Fen, Q.” He draws his arms around him, another risk, a selfish one and he can feel Q’s unease, unsure if it’s because of what he thinks he did to Fen or if its because the man with his arms around him now shares the same face with the thing that terrorized him for months.

This was beyond fucked up.

“It will get better, Q,” he’s telling him, unsure if he believes it. “It’ll get better,” he repeats, thinking if he says the words again somehow they’ll become real, but Q’s pulling away, rising.

“What else did it do while in my body?” he asks, pacing.

Eliot looks up at him. “Q—”

“What else Eliot?”

He stands, squeezing tired eyes shut, his face tormented, but he won’t lie to him, not now, not about this, so he tells him. He tells him all of it and he watches Q’s face, knowing the words have him diving, drowning in all the grisly memories.

“Eliot . . . ” He finally says, murmuring his name like a goddamn apology.

He takes two long strides, grabbing Q by the shoulders, walking him back across the room, pressing him up against a wall. “Stop,” he commands. “Look at me, Q.” And when he does, he says, “You have to _stop_.”

Q rakes him with an accusing look. “And have _you_?” The question is a challenge. “Have you stopped thinking about all the things it did while inside you?”

Their bodies are so close that Eliot can feel his words on his neck and if this were any other circumstance he’s sure his mouth would already be on his by now, but it isn’t and so he presses off of him, stepping back, heaving a sigh.

He hadn’t. He hadn’t stopped thinking about it. “No,” he finally confesses, thumbing for the ring that isn’t there.

“I’m sorry,” he hears Q say and Eliot thinks he might hurl him from the balcony if he apologizes one more fucking time, when Q continues, “about your wedding band. I looked everywhere for it.”

Eliot shifts his eyes to Q’s, silent. 

“I know what it meant to you, El. I looked for it everywhere,” he repeats and Q’s eyes are fixed on his own when he adds weighty words. “I remember.”

They both hear the unspoken, _do you?_

Q’s staring at him and Eliot swallows as a silence settles in between them, filled with things left unsaid.

 _It’s just a ring,_ he nearly says, downplaying its importance so no one sees the truth, but that’s what the old Eliot, the one that scares easy, would do, offer some snarky meaningless retort and he isn’t that man now, not anymore.

So he steps closer, nearly closing the space between their bodies, placing his hands on the wall beside Q’s head. “I remember all of it,” he murmurs.

Q looks away. “Did they tell you? How it told me you were dead in there?” He says. “And I couldn’t— I watched you die, El. I _buried_ you. I couldn’t— Eliot, we were planning to kill you— Well, not you, it, Darth Eliot—”

He leans back, amused. “ _Darth_ Eliot?” 

Quentin shrugs, pressing his back up against the wall, looking, somehow, impossibly, self-satisfied and self-conscious at the same time. “We didn’t know what to call it so we just—” And he’s rambling now, flustered and Eliot smiles because he knows he’s the one making him that way, that he still has this power, this ability to make Quentin Coldwater, after fifty years and change, a nervous mess. 

He steps closer then. “I’m _really_ glad you didn’t, Q,” he says, “kill me, I mean,” he murmurs and Q just stares at him, as if to say _don’t mention it_ , as if all he did was water his fucking plants. 

But then Eliot watches as a small grin tugs at the corner of Q’s mouth, the kind that alerts Eliot some jest is forthcoming. “ _Peaches and plums, motherfucker . . .”_ he hears Q saying. _“That_ was your go to line?” And the words have his heart feeling too small for his own chest, but this time, _this_ time he’s ready. 

He’s ready to level up to Q’s sort of brave.

He allows the grin tugging at his mouth to grow. “Seemed appropriate at the time,” he whispers against Q’s lips.

 _Now or never,_ the voice says and he can barely hear it over the rush of his own blood as a careful palm brushes past Q’s jaw, fingers curling around his neck, pausing, for just a moment, his mouth hovering, giving Q the option to stop him and when he doesn’t, Eliot presses his body against his, smiling, as he takes his mouth in his.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I actually write for another fandom, but was struggling to progress a story there due to a certain pair of magicians and that's the story of how this story was born. As always, comments fuel me. I may write more one-shots.


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